When car manufacturers design cars like the Kia Trail'ster, it's hard to tell who they think would want their car. That thing wouldn't be worth much out here. Those tiny tires are a joke! If only they'd make a consumer version of the offroad TURBO tractor. Now that's an offroad vehicle that will get you places!!!

Mud Test for the Best S.U.V. | Driven: Car Reviews | The New York TimesNot necessarily the kind of thing you'd take on the roughest roads in the Death Valley area, but they'll get you to most of the popular destinations.

deathvalleyjake: That might work for a small off-road vehicle. The distribution of the payload is a little odd, but I could see how that design might get you over a lot of obstacles that can't be negotiated with a normal vehicle with four wheels. There might be some tricky design issues that would need to be tackled, but it would be interesting to experiment with scaling it up.